William Murdoch

William Murdoch was a Scottish engineer, an employee of the steam engine firm Boulton and Watt, who in the 1790s developed the process of extracting flammable gas from coal and using it for practical lighting, first illuminating his own house in Redruth, Cornwall, and later factory buildings, with coal gas. His invention launched the gas lighting industry, which by the early nineteenth century was lighting streets, factories and homes across Britain and much of industrializing Europe, the first time a manufactured fuel was piped to buildings specifically to be burned for light. Murdoch also made improvements to the steam engine during his long career with Boulton and Watt, including a working model steam locomotive built years before Trevithicks. His demonstration that coal could be processed into a distributable fuel is regarded as the foundation of the modern gas industry.